A new kind of sand — which consists of grains of sand coated in graphite — could be the key to bringing clean drinking water to much of the world.

Dubbed super sand, the breakthrough is a cheap and effective way of purifying drinking water. Using sand as a water filtration tool is not a new concept, but the new, coated sand, has proved to be much more effective and simpler.

To create the super sand, researchers mix a graphite oxide with water and sand, before heating it up until all the water evaporates, leaving behind just the sand coated in graphite.

"This material demonstrates comparable performance to some commercially available activated carbon materials," researcher Dr Mainak Majumder told the BBC. "But given that this can be synthesized using room temperature processes and also from cheap graphite sources, it is likely to be cost-efficient."